He Was Too Young
by cooliochick5
Summary: Oh, yes, their plan for Toki's twenty-fifth birthday was about to go into motion and it took everything in them not to start laughing like a bunch of dildos. Toki's birthday roast would be one to remember; So, why had Pickles been trying to hard to forget it? Pickles remembers Toki's birthday after he's been captured by Magnus.
An empty bottle fell from a slack hand, rolling toward the space between the bed and floor. Skilled fingers darted to retrieve it once the hazy brain controlling them registered that it was even gone to begin with. With a gentle shake, the bottle was deemed useless and cast back under, a weary body rising from the bed; those skilled fingers finding aching temples, an inevitable hangover slowly creeping in.

"Ah, s*guitar riff*t." Pickles' voice came out in a shaky groan, uneasy feet meeting floor before he had time to realize he was moving too far to the left; hip bone colliding with a side table, sending an array of syringes and assorted pills onto the floor. If he had to be honest, Pickles hadn't touched those items in what seemed like years; it was probably only a few days, though. The drugs only helped to mellow him out; a handful of tylenol with heroine to add an edge was strong enough to let the drummer function as his usual self, however, that was not what he wanted right now.

He was too alert when he was on drugs; he always seemed to recall things that he forgot weren't supposed to be remembered. He could see images a little too clearly, names came back just a bit too fast.

A hug. The knife. Screa-

Slipping into the chair beside the table he had just made contact with, Pickles cradled his head, pressing his palms as hard against his eyes as he could handle; it never helped to ease the migraine, but the swirling colors behind his eyelids were, at least, a distraction.

As soon as he could stand the dim lighting in his tragic excuse of a bedroom, Pickles steadied himself to the floor, busying himself with picking up the pills, an intricate cocktail already taking form. He had moved across his floor, finding his thumb and forefinger made a pretty good team despite his drunken state, skillfully plucking to pink orbs and white and blue capsules from the crevices between each floor tile before his fingers stumbled across a new sensation.

His dethphone.

"Man, been lookin' all over fer dis t'ing." Pickles smirked to himself, setting the pills in a pile beside his foot before folding his legs and picking up the technology before him. A small circle of light blinked green in the corner of the screen, indicating a missed message or two. Taking his chances with yet another bright glare to the eyes, Pickles' finger found the correct button, bringing the phone to life.

He had a little more than a missed message.

Apparently he had missed twenty-three texts, forty-eight phone calls, and all the voicemails that had followed after.

"Geez, how long 'ave I been missin' dis?" The drummer groaned, quiet enough not to aggravate his raging migraine. Swiping the screen, Pickles clicked the first text on his phone,

'Hey, brother, I need, like, 20 hundy. Cool?'

'Ye?'

'Hey, answer your fkin phone'

'*Fucking'

Seth.

Pickles hissed as he deleted the messages from his brother; there was no need to look through them; he just wanted more money. Discovering all of the messages to be from his brother, the drummer ignored the rest, moving on to his voicemails. Holding the phone away from his ear, the cripplingly irritating voice of Facebone's blared,

"You have forty-six voicemails!" The voice began before playing each message in order. Usually, Pickles would have cared just a tad more about who was calling him (after all, if must've been pretty damn important if they were to call instead of send him a text) but, today, he was far from interest, deleting the voicemail the second it began to play. It took him only five minutes to get through them all and his phone had resorted to playing saved messages.

"You have fourteen saved messages; Message one," His phone droned on, leaving the drummer to wonder just why he had saved those things.

Again, they must've been pretty important if he had bothered with them.

"Hey, Pickles, it's um...it's Nathan...the girls are here...we got the place...Toki has no," The singer stopped the chuckle slightly, "Toki's got no idea. Call me. We gotta….we gotta pull this off…'Kay, bye."

"Wha' was tha- H-hey! I 'member that….it was Toki's birthday…" Pickles said out loud to no one in particular, his previous tone suddenly one of slight joy; that party had been the one of the best they had ever pulled off! Toki's was freaked out, the concert went great, and they killed a guy, "Man, 'ow long ago was that?"

WIth a press of the '3' on his keypad, Pickles waited for the drone to answer his question,

"Message information: Caller: 345-987-5432, Date: September 26th, 2010. Time-"

"Whoa, wait, chief," Pickles pointed a slightly shaking finger to his phone screen, "Ya mean ta tell me that was...er….that was…." Scrunching his aching face in slight annoyance, Pickles tried his damndest to recall just what year they were in, though the braincell had long since been brutally murdered in an assault by alcohol. Sighing slowly through his nose, the drummer clicked out of the voice message, blurred vision searching out the calendar icon on his phone.

September 25th, 2011

"'Ey, would ye look at that. Toki's birthday is tomorrow! 'Ow old is 'e gonna be ageen…" Pickles hoisted himself from the floor, stumbling over to his unmade bed, not bothering to move the playboy magazines aside as he did simple math in his head,

"Le's see…I'm thirty-...two! Ye see, I 'member...I 'member my age...okay, then uh...Nat'an is...thirty-four...yeah…'e's uh…'e's two years older than me….and Swiskgaar is, er, five...ye, he'd be, uh…'e'd be thirty-seven. Murderface is thirty-five...yeah… And Toki is…." Letting a hand slip over a sweaty face, Pickles again pressed as hard as he could against his eyes, willing the numbers to return to him. Instead of numbers, he got a blurred image; he knew it well enough to know what it was from, even with rough edges.

It was when the band first signed their record deal. They had celebrated with a day of boozing, though the new guy, whatever the hell his name was, just watched, fingers scratching at the hole in his pants.

"'Ey, new guy. 'Ave a drink." Pickles jeered, thrusting a beer can into the guitarist's hand. The boy stared down it before placing it on the table beside him,

"No...I- er...how you say, nots of age." The brunette rubs the back of his neck shyly. Pickles raises an eyebrow, so the other elaborates, "I ams, er, six-i-teeni."

"Sixteen? S*guitar riff*t, I already needed my third liver transplant by then." The drummers is only mildly stunned, though he is a bit more agitated with himself for not realizing how young looking the boy was earlier, regardless, the twenty-two year old offered a crooked smile, "Don't worry about da age t'ing, yer supervised."

As soon as Pickles realized the fuzzy memory would produce no answer, he screwed his eyes shut tight, looking for another hint to his question,

"Alright, Toki, you're eighteen now, you can finally get into strip clubs with us." Nathan slapped an open palm to the boy's shoulder. Truth be told, this was not Toki's first time in a strip club, however, it was the first time he could get in without a fake I.D.

"Do you thinks the beautiful ladies will like me?"

"Like you? Dood, they'll be all over ya!" Pickles cut in, already counting out the bills in his wallet to pay for a dance,

"I wanna may for hish firsht dansh!" Murderface threw his hand in the air, cutting off the drummer's counting,

"No way, man, ya don't even got a pot to piss i-"

"I'll's do it." Swiskgarr stepped forward, a twenty dollar bill already between his fingers, "You's ams only eighteen once."

"Okey, so that was...man, when was that…." Pickles groaned yet again, the aspect of reminiscing becoming more and more intriguing to his slowly clearing mind.

"Alright, Toki, you're twenty-one now. You can finally start drinking booze." Nathan jeered, pulling the Dethbike to a stop in front of The Depths of Humanity. Toki nervously rubbed the back of his neck, pushing his now beyond shoulder length hair away from it.

"I, uh...I has a confessions to make...I dranks booze before…" The young man looked more ashamed by his confession than anything else, however, the news passed by the band like they had only heard the daily weather.

"Yeah, Toki, we know." Pickles rolled his eyes, though the boy's face did not waver.

"No, no, I means, I wents outs and dranks without yous."

"Toki, ams not a big deals." Swkisgaar offered, though Toki continued to bite his lip. Nathan finally jumped from the bike, brushing the dirt off his boots as he landed,

"Come on, Toki, I'll, uh, I'll buy you your first drink….with us."

Pickles remembered having to drag Toki from the bar as soon as the boy was too drunk to remember his outlandish bout of Madonna karaoke getting out of hand. But even then, he couldn't quite recall just how long ago that was.

He could vaguely remember when Toki turned twenty-three, they had been playing a show in Britain. Toki threw up in front of Buckingham Palace and the rest of the night was a blur.

"What'd we do fer him last year…" Pickles set his mind to the year previous; somewhere along the line, he had forgotten exactly why he didn't think back on it in the first place.

"You ams halfway to thirtys, huh?" Swiskgarr nudged Toki before their concert. The Norwegian rolled his eyes,

"So? You ams almost forty!"

"And I gets twice as many as the womens than yous do." The blonde replied, before casting eyes to his other band mates.

Oh, yes, their plan for Toki's twenty-fifth birthday was about to go into motion and it took everything in them not to start laughing like a bunch of dildos.

Toki's birthday roast would be one to remember.

So, why had Pickles been trying to hard to forget it?

"He was twenty-five last year." Pickles finally concluded, the satisfaction of figuring out the answer washing over him like a beautiful drug. However, Pickles' euphoria didn't last long as the numbers kept rolling, "It's his twenty-sixth birthday…."

Twenty-six….As the number rolled off his tongue, Pickles felt a sickening twist to his being. Though Swiskgarr's argument still stood, Toki was halfway to thirty, he still seemed so young.

No, he didn't seem that young, he was that young.

He was young and missing.

As far as Pickles knew, he wasn't even alive to celebrate his twenty-sixth birthday.

He wouldn't be getting any closer to thirty than half way.

Just as the dread and guilt began to settle in, Pickles remembered something far more important.

Picking himself off of his bed, the drummer began a shaky shuffle toward the table he had just been sitting beside; his cocktail of drugs still in a neat pile on the floor, just as he had left them.

"Can't let dis go ta waste…"

 ** _Disclaimers: I own nothing._**


End file.
